Briefing Note - E3 Sectoral Synthesis of 2013-2014 Evaluation Findings

This briefing note summaries an in-depth review, produced by USAID’s Bureau for Economic Growth, Education and Environment (E3), which follows a previous E3 study of 2012 evaluation findings. The review is examines evaluations completed between January 2013 and September 2014 that were related to E3 technical sectors. The E3 Sectoral Synthesis is intended to disseminate knowledge gained from evaluation in order to inform and improve future programming and project designs,as well as generate lessons learned to improve the quality of future evaluations. This Briefing Note presents broad findings from the E3 Sectoral Synthesis, and will be followed by a detailed report in June 2015 to be prepared by the E3 Analytics and Evaluation Project.

The E3 Sectoral Synthesis includes 117 evaluations that were reviewed by a team of 44 sector specialists from 10 offices across the E3 Bureau, who extracted key lessons learned, project results, areas for improvement and innovative practices from the evaluation reports. They also looked at cross-cutting topics such as gender equality and women’s empowerment, private sector engagement, and governance. The quality of each evaluation report was also reviewed by the E3 Analytics and Evaluation Project using a checklist that was used to rate report quality as part of the Meta-Evaluation of Quality and Coverage of USAID Evaluations 2009-2012. By using the same checklist, the E3 Sectoral Synthesis can present findings regarding change over time on factors related to evaluation quality.